3) Add Categories and Pages: When you install WordPress, the only default category is “Uncategorized”. So, add some categories by clicking on Posts> Categories.
You also need to add some basic pages such as About Us, Terms of Use, Privacy, Disclaimer, Contact Us, Write For Us Advertise etc in your wordpress blog. To add a page click, on New Page from Pages.

4) Adjust your time zone under ‘general’ settings.

5) Create a new administrator with new username and password and remove the default admin username.

Plugins

Read this Post, Top 15 Must Have Plugins for your new WordPress Blog.
Though there are many other good plugins too but it all depends on your requirements. The plugins mentioned above are the basic and important plugins required for the proper functionality of your blog.

Search Engine Optimization

1) Customize Permalink Structure: The default permalinks in wordpress are in the shape of www.youngblahn.com/?p=25. which is not good for SEO. So, change this permalink structure, by visiting “Permanlinks Settings” from your WordPress Dash Board.
I’d recommend you to select this permalink structure – “http://youngblah.com/sample-post/”.

3) Set your blog with Google Webmaster Tools(It will help your site to index quickly) and Google Analytics(To Monitor your traffic stats).

4) Install PubSubHubbub Plugin that notifies all major search engines in a much faster way(real time).

5) Add a FeedBurner RSS Feed in your blog so that your visitors can be automatically informed about a new blog post.

So, now your blog is ready. You can start writing articles. These are some of the basic and important things that you need to do initially. But getting organic traffic from search engines is not that easy. You need to optimize each and every page with keywords, meta information, headings, title, alt-tag, etc.

Feel Free to post comments and questions, if you have any problems. Tell us about our post.Keep visiting this space for more updates on blogging.
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